07w50:5 The Evolutionary Wild Fire Posted December 15th, 2007 by timothy. 0 Comments Goodreads | 2007 week 50 number 5 (The Evolutionary Wild Fire) It began on December 10th, with two articles: Are humans evolving faster? http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uou-ahe120607.php Genome study places modern humans in the evolutionary fast lane http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uow-gsp120507.php and then was picked up by Scientific American, the Houston Chronicle, ABC News, the Huffington PostM, Arts Journal.com, and Reuters. The next day on December 11th, Bruce Sterling posts on this in his blog, liking to the coverage in the LA Times. The New York Times of course has it, and Drudgereport links to the Yahoo version. Slashdot links to the Reuters story. The BBC picks it up as well. Drudge Retort links to the story in the Houston Chronicle. 2Blowhards links to the original research paper (PDF), with supporting links to the LA Times story, the PR, (via Steve Sailer), John Hawks’ blog, and Scientific American. Andrew Sullivan gets in the game. William Saletan blogs it in his Slate column. Wednesday Dec 12th brings one link to the acceleration story, by mcmath61 at Plastic.com. However, on December 12th the New York Times reports on another evolutionary story, as to the adaptation of a women’s spine to bipedal pregnancy. This news release at Eureka Alert suggests the loss of fur (and hence the loss of the ape’s tendency to have babies clinging to the fur) encouraged the development of that bipedality. CNN picks up the pregnancy story, The Eureka Alert press release on the adaptive spine goes out on the following day, December 13th, and the New York Times reprints a slightly altered version of their previous day’s take. The Boston Globe writes up the pregnancy story, and the Globe & Mail reproduces it. Jason Kottke gets on the Accelerated Evolution bandwagon on this day, linking to the New York Times article, as does Slashdot. The Economist does its write-up. Finally, on December 14th, William Saletan picks up the theme and writes about it in a piece called The Evolution of Evolution.
